Iron is necessary for bacterial growth and is imported via specific membrane systems that span the two membranes of gram-negative bacteria.
The present post-doctoral project aims at deciphering the mechanism of heme import in two different bacterial heme acquisition systems:
A) The HasA/HasR system from Serratia marcescens, that has been already extensively studied by our team (Biou et al., 2021; Krieg et al., 2009; Wojtowicz et al., 2016);
B) the Hgps, a family of TonB-dependent transporters from Haemophilus influenzae able to import heme from the human hemoglobin-haptoglobin complex.
These projects involve multi-protein expression and purification, cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and in vivo studies to elucidate their mechanisms.

Our laboratory is a leader in membrane protein biochemistry and biophysics and has access to several cryo-TEM microscopes including those at the Pasteur institute in Paris and the ESRF in Grenoble. We use the computing cluster at the Theoretical Biophysics lab at the IBPC for data processing.
For more information on host lab, click here:
http://umr7099.ibpc.fr/research-themes/biochemistry-of-iron-transport-in-haemophilus/